Debby Thompson remembers two years into her assignment as a covert missionary in Poland during the Cold War saying to God in a prayer, “You are doing so many amazing things, and no one even knows.”
“It was baffling to me,” recalled the Greenwood High School graduate and former Schlater resident.
At that moment, she was in the baby nursery at her residence in the then-communist country taking care of her infant child while her husband and toddler were at a nearby park.
“In a covert ministry, we were under a code of silence,” she said. “We did not send out newsletters. We did not meet with missions committees. We didn’t have phone calls with pastors. Everything was undercover, under the radar, because it was illegal” to be a Christian missionary.
She said she felt as if the glory of God was being shoved into a closet.
Then, she said, “It was as if the Lord spoke to my heart and said, ‘Debby, you do what I called you to do today — you take care of this baby — and the day will come when you can tell my story.”
Four decades later, that day has finally arrived.
Thompson, 71, describes her life during the eight years she lived in Poland from 1977 until 1985 in her newly published book “Pulling Back the Iron Curtain: Stories from a Cold War Missionary.”
“With each copy of this book, I realize the day has come to tell his story, and it is a great joy and a great privilege to see this come together,” she said.
“Pulling Back the Iron Curtain” includes a collection of 40 stories that take readers on a journey through “what it was like to live behind the Iron Curtain in the bitterly cold days of the frigid Cold War and see God show up on every corner,” Thompson said. “It’s not a history of our ministry there. It’s not a documentary of all that was going on politically. It is a very personal, authentic representation of a pioneer missionary family’s experience. It covers a broad swath of territory — from a crisis in the kitchen to the crisis at the border.”
Thompson will be at Turnrow Books Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. She will be one of three authors attending the Holiday Open House event, which is presented annually by the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce and participating businesses.
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Thompson moved to Schlater with her family when she was 5 years old.
“My life has always had that very same place as a grounding in my soul,” she said about where she spent most of her childhood.
After graduating from high school, she attended Mississippi State University, where she studied secondary education. But Thompson admitted, “I really went to university to be a cheerleader.”
MSU is also where the Bulldog cheerleader met her husband, Larry, who was a football player.
They married in 1973.
The Thompsons have three adult children and now reside in Cincinnati, where they continue to work with the same organization — Campus Crusade for Christ International — that started their life of mission work overseas 47 years ago.
Thompson is a speaker, writer and mentor for women around the world. Her first book, “The Leader’s Wife: Living with Eternal Intentionality,” was published in 2018.
Thompson said she never saw herself as a writer until later in life. “I never dreamed to see my name published on the front of a book cover, and it has been in the second half of my adult life God has brought writing to me. ... Writing has captured my heart.”
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The Thompsons began their global mission work in 1974 as a young married couple.
They spent 33 years in Eastern Europe and witnessed dramatic social, political and spiritual change over that period of time.
In 1977, the Thompsons were asked by their organization to live covertly in Poland to start a grassroots ministry of evangelism and discipleship.
She said God “gave us an assignment, and he gave us the strength to obey him.”
During this time, the young family included the Thompsons’ 17-month-old child and their second child, who was born in a communist hospital a couple of years after their arrival.
Thinking about those years, Thompson said it was a great privilege to have spent time there as a missionary.
“The Polish people taught us so much about what it meant to love people, to love God,” she said. “They were so gracious to us, and it was a privilege to walk among them. My heart celebrates with thanksgiving the opportunity to have spent time there with those people at such a difficult time in their own history. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
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Thompson shares personal and intimate stories about the eight years of that assignment in “Pulling Back the Iron Curtain.”
While she talks about her life in Poland, what the book focuses on is what God can do in any circumstances.
She writes in her book that it has two themes: God’s “amazing miracles behind the Iron Curtain, but also his amazing miracles behind the curtain of my heart.”
“I would want readers to take away the overwhelming faithfulness of God,” Thompson said about her new book, “his incredible commitment to meet the needs of anyone who says, ‘I want to be where you want me to be, but I need you to provide the resources.’ I want that to be very much an encouragement to the readers, to know how personal God can be.”
At the beginning of the book, it includes background information about the Cold War, which was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.
“Because we live in a world that forgets so easily what life was like during the Cold War, I felt compelled to include as an introduction to the book a description of the Cold War and definitions of Cold War terms,” she said. “I wanted that to be done in a way that would set the stage for any reader, whether Gen Z, millennial or boomer, could pick up the book and find it readable.”
She said the book is a celebration and way for the people who were praying for the Thompsons during those years — including many in the Greenwood area — to learn the outcome of those prayers.
“Our family and our friends have very much played a part in our service for the kingdom of God,” she said. “That’s why I feel like this is not just my story, but this truly is our story. ... The things that we could not say for so many years, the stories that could not be spoken about, can now be told.”
Coming back to her hometown to sign copies of her book will be a special moment for Thompson.
“When we walked on that jetway, got on a plane, left everything that we held dear to go and live in Poland behind the Iron Curtain and lead this life of covert ministry, we really felt like we were burning bridges and we wondered would we ever come back,” she said. “To see how God has rebuilt those bridges and has maintained relationships and in fact caused relationships to thrive, it is a privilege that people still care about us, love us and want to know about our lives. ... It’s a blessing to be from the Mississippi Delta.”
- Contact Ruthie Robison at 581-7235 or rrobison@gwcommonwealth.com.
